Prayer for Children

Requests for a child — one who is ill, one who is struggling at school, one who has stopped speaking to you, one who is not here yet.

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There is a kind of fear that only arrives with a child. It is not fear for yourself and it does not respond to reassurance. It is the permanent, low-level awareness that the most important thing in your life is walking around outside your body, making its own decisions.

The requests here cover a wide age range and a wider set of situations. A toddler in hospital. A nine-year-old who has stopped wanting to go to school. A seventeen-year-old who has become a stranger in his own house. A forty-year-old son who does not ring. The child grows up; the particular quality of the worry does not change much.

This page also holds the requests that are hardest to place anywhere else — a pregnancy that ended, years of trying, a child who is wanted and has not arrived. Those belong here, and they are not lesser versions of parenthood.

How parents pray

Almost every parent's prayer is some version of keep them safe, and almost every parent knows while saying it that safety is not something anyone can be promised. It gets said anyway. It is the oldest prayer there is and the least sophisticated, and that is not a reason to stop.

As children get older the prayer changes shape. It becomes less about protection and more about the things you can no longer control — the friends, the choices, the beliefs. Praying for an adult child is largely an exercise in letting go while continuing to care, which is much harder than it sounds and is most of what parenthood eventually is.

Parents also pray about their own conduct more than they admit: for patience at bedtime, for not repeating what was said to them at that age, for the ability to apologise to a child without qualifying it. Those are among the most-answered prayers on this page, because they are about the one person actually in reach.

For a child who is struggling

God, something is wrong and he will not tell me what. I have asked in every way I know and I am making it worse by asking. Be with him where I cannot get to. Send him one person he will talk to, even if it is not me. And keep me steady enough to be there when he is ready. Amen.

For an adult child who has gone quiet

Lord, she has her own life now and most of it happens without me. I do not want to be the mother who cannot let go, and I do not know how to stop worrying. Keep her. Let her know the door is open without me having to say it every week. Amen.

When the child has not come

Father, another month, another test, another conversation I cannot face having. Everyone around us seems to manage this without trying. I do not know how to keep hoping and I do not know how to stop. Hold us together through this, whichever way it goes. Amen.

What helps besides praying

Ask less and be around more. Teenagers in particular talk sideways — in a car, doing the washing up, at eleven at night — and almost never in response to a direct question.
Take a sudden change seriously. A child who stops eating, stops sleeping, stops seeing friends or stops caring about something they loved is telling you something, and school counsellors and GPs would far rather see them early.
Apologise properly when you get it wrong, without the second half that takes it back. Children remember which adults could do this.
For fertility and loss: find one person or one group who has been through it. The isolation of it is unusually heavy, largely because so few people talk about it out loud.

Questions people ask

My child has left the faith. What do I pray?: Usually for the relationship first. Parents who keep the relationship intact stay in a position to matter later; parents who make faith the condition of closeness generally lose both. Beyond that, most people pray to be able to love their child without an agenda attached, which the child can always detect.
Is it my fault?: Almost certainly far less than you think. Parents carry an enormous amount of causal blame for things that came from temperament, from peers, from illness or from plain chance. Where you did get something wrong, it can usually be repaired by saying so.
Can I post about my child's mental health?: Yes, and please keep it general — no name, no school, no diagnosis they have not chosen to share. They may read this page one day. If there is any immediate risk of harm, contact a crisis line or your doctor first; the numbers are on the help page.
Does this page include miscarriage and infertility?: It does. Those requests are welcome here and they are prayed for. If the loss is recent and you are grieving rather than hoping, the Grief & Loss hub may be closer to where you are.